The art of detective fiction

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Bibliographic Information

The art of detective fiction

edited by Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales and Robert Vilain

Macmillan, 2000

  • : Outside North America
  • : In North America

Available at  / 9 libraries

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Note

Later printing published by Palgrave Macmillan

Includes index

Published in association with the Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

: In North America ISBN 9780312229894

Description

In the hands of many of the great writers, the unravelling of mystery is only one strand within a complex project. Other things get unravelled, too - the belief in a rationally explicable world, in the beneficent, ordering force of culture and civilization. Constantly the detective story delights in muddying the waters, in acknowledging the omnipresent possibilities of anarchy and carnage. As a genre, it is supremely able to combine popular appeal with the ability to disturb, provoke and challenge the reader. The essays in this volume all pay tribute to, and seek to account for, the astonishing durability of the detective story as a narrative genre. They range generously, taking a variety of theoretical approaches and including detective fiction in languages other than English, but particular attention is paid to the 'Golden Age' of English detective story-writing and to the 'hard-boiled' American version of the genre. This is a collection that will appeal to the scholar and to the devotee alike; to all those, in fact, who cannot resist the lure of finding out whodunit.
Volume

: Outside North America ISBN 9780333746011

Description

The contributors to this volume all pay tribute to, and seek to account for, the astonishing durability of the detective story as a narrative genre. The essays range generously, taking a variety of theoretical approaches and including detective fiction in languages other than English, but particular attention is paid to the 'Golden Age' of English detective story writing and to the 'hard-boiled' American version on the genre. This is a collection that will appeal to the scholar and to the devotee alike, to all those, in fact, who can never resist the lure of finding out whodunnit.

Table of Contents

  • Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction
  • M.Swales Poe and the Beautiful Segar Girl
  • J.Skvorecky Body Language: A Study of Death and Gender in Crime Fiction
  • S.Dunant Fascination and Nausea: Finding Our the Hard-Boiled Way
  • D.Trotter The Writers who Knew Too Much: Populism and Paradox in Detective Fiction's Golden Age
  • D.Glover 'Sherlock's Children: The Birth of the Series
  • M.Priestman Making the Dead Speak: Spiritualism and Detective Fiction
  • C.Willis The Locus of Disruption: Serial Murder and Generic Conventions in Detective Fiction
  • D.Schmid The Detective as Clown: A Taxonomy
  • A.Laski Mean Streets and English Gardens
  • W.Chernaik Authority, Social Anxiety and the Body in Crime Fiction: Patricia Corwell's Unnatural Exposure
  • P.Messent Desires and Devices: On Women Detectives in Fiction
  • B.Berglund A Band of Sisters
  • M.Kinsman An Urban Myth: Fantomas and the Surrealists
  • R.Vilain Bleeding the Thriller: Alain Robbe-Grillet's Intertextual Crimes
  • J.C.Brown Railway Novel: Railway Spine
  • L.Marcus Open Letter to Detectives and Psychoanalysts: Analysis and Reading
  • P.Ffrench Index

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